Foogle Business - Environmental Test - Chronic Water Shortages - Take The Taker's Test - Are YOU Using Too Much Water in your kettle to Make Your Coffee?

World getting 'literally greener'

By Alex Kirby
BBC News Online environment correspondent in Jeju, Korea

About a third of the world is still covered with forests...

The world seems to have begun to turn greener, in the strictly literal sense, according to the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep).
Satellite data show plant growth has been measurably more vigorous over the last 25 years.
The news comes in Unep's first Global Environment Outlook Year Book 2003, which highlights trends and problems.
The book is being launched at the opening here of Unep's annual council, attended by about 150 delegations.
The meeting runs from 29 to 31 March.
Changes
Satellite and climate data between 1982 and 1999 show an "apparent greening of the biosphere", Unep says.
"The amount of energy produced by plants through photosynthesis, minus what they use in respiration, increased globally by about 6% during the last two decades of the 20th century," it adds.

... but access to water remains a big problem worldwide.

Advances in farming and successful conservation programmes around the world may have contributed to the greening trend, according to the organisation.
Unep says areas in tropical zones and in the high latitudes of the northern hemisphere accounted for 80% of the increased growth.
Nearly 40% came from the Amazon rainforests, probably because of a decline in cloud cover and the resulting increase in solar energy reaching the surface.
Changes in monsoon dynamics meant more rainfall in the 1990s and increased vegetation over India, Pakistan and Bangladesh and the Sahel belt of sub-Saharan Africa.
Challenges
The Geo Year Book 2003 is the first in an annual series published to complement Unep's encyclopaedic Global Environment Outlook reports - the third of which was published in 2002.

Without concerted action, about a third of the world's population is likely to suffer from chronic water shortages

Klaus Toepfer
Unep executive director

The new publication reviews major developments during the year, identifies developing challenges, and gives details of progress on key indicators like greenhouse gas emissions, and threats to animals and plants.
It says the economic losses these cause are estimated to have multiplied five times since the 1970s, to a total of $629bn for the 1990s.
A special feature examines the prospects for reaching international goals on providing more people with water, including the Millennium Development Goal agreed by world leaders in 2000 - to halve by 2015 the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water.
Unep executive director Klaus Toepfer, says: "Without concerted action, about a third of the world's population is likely to suffer from chronic water shortages within a few decades."
Reform urged
Much of the meeting will be given over to the need for water and sanitation.
Other issues include the problem of dust and sand storms caused by the spread of deserts in Mongolia and China, over a quarter of whose land is classed as desert.
The environmental problems facing small island states, like poverty, natural disasters and declining fish stocks are also on the agenda.
On the eve of the conference the campaign group Friends of the Earth called for Unep to be transformed into the UN Environmental Organisation, with the same membership and funding basis as other UN specialised agencies.
It said this was necessary because of "the rapid deterioration of the world's water resources, urban environments, oceans, forests and other ecosystems, and a too weak and ineffective system of international environmental governance".

Matters relating to the detrimental effects of human activity on the biosphere, their causes, and the search for possible solutions. Since the Industrial Revolution, the demands made by both the industrialized and developing nations on the Earth's natural resources are increasingly affecting the balance of the Earth's resources. Over a period of time, some of these resources are renewable – trees can be replanted, soil nutrients can be replenished – but many resources, such as fossil fuels and minerals, are non-renewable and in danger of eventual exhaustion. In addition, humans are creating many other problems that may endanger not only their own survival, but also that of other species. For instance, deforestation and air pollution are not only damaging and radically altering many natural environments, they are also affecting the Earth's climate by adding to the greenhouse effect and global warming, while water pollution is seriously affecting aquatic life, including fish populations, as well as human health.

Environmental pollution is normally taken to mean harm done to the natural environment by human activity. In fact, some environmental pollution can have natural sources, for example volcanic activity, which can cause major air pollution or water pollution and destroy flora and fauna. In terms of environmental issues, however, environmental pollution relates to human actions, especially in connection with energy resources. The demands of the industrialized nations for energy to power machines, provide light, heat, and so on are constantly increasing. The most versatile form of energy is electricity, which can be produced from a wide variety of other energy sources, such as the fossil fuels – coal, oil, and gas – and nuclear power produced from uranium. These are all non-renewable resources and, in addition, their extraction, transportation, utilization, and waste products, all give rise to pollutants of one form or another. The effects of these pollutants can have consequences not only for the local environment, but also at a global level.

Widespread effects of pollution
Many people think of air, water, and soil pollution as distinctly separate forms of pollution. However, each part of the global ecosystem – air, water, and soil – depends upon the others, and upon the plants and animals living within the environment. Thus, pollution that might appear to affect only one part of the environment is also likely to affect other parts. For example, the emission of vehicle exhausts or acid gases from a power plant might appear to harm only the surrounding atmosphere. But once released into the air they are carried by the prevailing winds, often for several hundred kilometres, before being deposited as acid rain. This can produce an enormous range of adverse effects across a very large area, for example: increased acidity levels in lakes and rivers are harmful to fish stocks and other aquatic life; physical damage to trees and other vegetation results in widespread destruction of forest areas; increased acidity of soils reduces the range of crops that can be grown, as well as decreasing production levels; rocks such as limestone, both in the natural landscape and in buildings, are eroded – the effect of acid rain on some of the world's most important architectural structures is having disastrous consequences. In addition, acid rain in the form of aerosols or attached to smoke particles can cause respiratory problems in humans. Pollution of the Arctic atmosphere is creating Arctic haze– the result of aerosol emissions, such as dust, soot, and sulphate particles, originating in Europe.

Desertification
The destruction of fertile topsoil, and consequent soil erosion, as a result of human activity is becoming a worldwide problem. About 25% of the planet's land surface is now thought to be at risk due to increased demand from expanding populations. This damage and destruction results not only from increased demand for food, but also as a result of changes in agricultural practices. Desertification of vast areas, such as in the Sahel in northern Africa, have resulted from the replacement of traditional farming methods in these marginal lands for the present-day cultivation of cash crops such as groundnuts and cotton. The consequence has been that the soil has lost its fertility and the land has become arid. Similarly, changes in agricultural practices produced the dust bowl in the USA in the 1930s and, more recently, the move from mixed farming to arable and the removal of hedges in order to enlarge fields for the use of modern agricultural machinery has resulted in the loss of topsoil in the large areas of the English Fenlands.

Effects of tourism
Environmental problems are developing not only from demands on natural resources in order to satisfy basic needs. The greater affluence and leisure time that people in the developed nations now enjoy is giving rise to the increasing demands of tourism. Not only are the more accessible areas of scenic beauty in their own countryside at risk from over-use and tramping feet, but in the tourists' search for more exotic locations, the landscapes, lifestyles, and wildlife of some of the world's more remote regions are now being brought within the reach of – and despoilment by – an ever-expanding tourist industry.

Public awareness
Concern for the environment is not just a late-20th century issue. In England, the first smoke abatement law dates from 1273, while in 1306 the burning of coal was prohibited in London because of fears of air pollution. However, the inspiration for the creation of the modern environmental movements came about from the publication in 1962 of Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring, in which she attacked the indiscriminate use of pesticides. This, combined with the increasing affluence of Western nations which allowed people to look beyond their everyday needs, triggered an awareness of environmental issues on a global scale and resulted in the formation of the Green movement. In the mid-1960s, the detection of CFCs in the atmosphere by British scientist James Lovelock led to a realization of the damaging effects of ozone depletion and added to public concern for the environment, as did his development of the Gaia hypothesis, which views the Earth as a single integrated and self-sustaining organism.

International measures
In 1972, the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) was formed to coordinate international measures for monitoring and protecting the environment, and in 1985 the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer, which promised international cooperation in research, monitoring, and the exchange of information on the problem of ozone depletion, was signed by 22 nations. Discussions arising out of this convention led to the signing in 1987 of the Montréal Protocol. In 1992, representatives of 178 nations met in Rio de Janeiro for the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development. Known as the 'Earth Summit', this was one of the most important conferences ever held on environmental issues. UN members signed agreements on the prevention of global warming and the preservation of forests and endangered species, along with many other environmental issues.

"The higher our income, the more resources we control and the more havoc we wreak."

Paul Harrison
US dramatist and director.
[Guardian 1 May 1992]

SITE MAP TO THIS SITE
*HOLD MOUSE OVER IMAGE LEARN MORE, BE MORE**
Last-Modified: 05/25/08 19:46 LINKS